An agency that owns a number of black helicopters has derided "conspiracy theorists" who have spoken out against the DHS's plans to monitor journalists:
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Friday pushed back against a report warning of the agency's plan to compile a list of media professionals and influencers as part of a "media monitoring" effort.
The plan outlined in a FedBizOpps.gov posting by DHS this week says the agency will create a database of "any and all media coverage" related to the agency or specific events, with a list of more than 290,000 global news sources searchable by location and individual reporters.
[...] Responding to a tweet from the Committee to Protect Journalists, which shared the Forbes report, DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton suggested that critics who cited the department's news tracking plan as a supposed attack on the press were "conspiracy theorists." "Despite what some reporters may suggest, this is nothing more than the standard practice of monitoring current events in the media," Houlton tweeted. "Any suggestion otherwise is fit for tin foil hat wearing, black helicopter conspiracy theorists."
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday April 08 2018, @07:09AM (6 children)
The CIA doesn't have as many clandestine agents as you might at first think.
A great many CIA employees are so very lazy that they spend all day, every day, year after year just reading the newspapers...
... in hopes that they can find out about the next Usama ben Laden before he crashes any airplanes into tall buildings.
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(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @07:23AM
Aha, so that is why they ignored all intelligence they had about 9/11 before it happened. They were too busy reading the newspapers. These "newspapers" are obviously a danger to national security and must be stopped.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 08 2018, @03:02PM (2 children)
That's not laziness, that's their job. I can't find a good link to describe it, but overt intelligence collection (which includes reading the world's newspapers) is one of their jobs. That includes newspapers, broadcasts, research papers, etc.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday April 09 2018, @12:14AM (1 child)
kj kjnk jkj jjnkj
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(Score: 4, Funny) by Wootery on Monday April 09 2018, @10:47AM
SoylentNews doesn't yet support vi's navigation keys.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @08:45PM (1 child)
"The CIA doesn't have as many clandestine agents as you might at first think"
Ok so you actually know this? Where do you get a count from? Would you trust that count even if say the CIA itself released a number?
Perhaps you should read up on the subject there are many (heavily redacted) books written by former CIA operatives and the picture they paint is quite different to what you are suggesting.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday April 10 2018, @10:15PM
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2017-featured-story-archive/30-years-of-remembrance.html [cia.gov]
Either the soviets don't know how to find spies, or there just aren't that many of them.
Many spies are "assets" and not employees of the CIA itself.
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